


Sunset

by deathwailart



Series: Rhiannon Amell [1]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Circle of Magi, Gen, Stolen Moments, Sunsets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-11 00:48:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/472605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>30 days of writing challenge: sunset</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunset

The Templars don't like letting them out in the dark. It's when they often arrive at the tower or that's how the stories go, whenever they talk about arriving at Kinloch Hold, the imposing tower rising out of the murky waters of Lake Calenhad, often so many miles away from wherever they called home before. Rhiannon can't remember arriving or her first night in Kinloch Hold in the communal dormitories but she can remember a series of nights blurring together with ghosts and ghouls, every unfamiliar noise a creature hunting her down, clawing at the windows to get in, hiding in one of the cupboards until she lost the battle to stay awake. It was Jowan who first demonstrated that there was nothing under her bed to be afraid of by taking her by the hand, not much older than her but he had seemed so sure back then; in the early years he had been the confident one who smiled and knew so much more than her, the one she looked up to.  
  
That changed in time, she showed an aptitude that caught the attention of her peers and her teachers, perhaps a little seed of resentment was sown that would blossom into a poisonous weed that choked their friendship but she had never forgotten Jowan. If anything, she had tried to impress him. People had thought they'd been seeing each other when she would rush up to him and drag him away by the sleeve of his robes, breathless and flushed as she showed him something new she had mastered. Maybe she'd hoped that Jowan would say something or do something but Jowan was so awkward around people in that way Mages so often were, either soft with a tendency towards being pudgy when there was never anything much to do beyond read or practice, practice or read most days and nowhere to go or lanky, all elbows and knees. Yes there were the few swimming lessons in the lake that filled them with dread because there were monsters in the lake surely or skeletons. Then Anders happened and that all stopped. Only the most trusted were allowed outside under strict supervision to gather the herbs they needed that grew around the tower, far from the docks. She was allowed out more often than not, picking elfroot in all weathers but always when it was light, as if they would cloak themselves in the first available shadows and disappear to terrorise the poor pious Fereldens. Escapes _were_ easiest at night but she had no desire to escape. That wasn't to say she didn't have dreams outside the tower but it had comprised her whole life, she didn't know anything else, as sad as that might be to others and trying to keep her head down and prove herself was all she thought she'd achieve. Maybe she'd be lucky and someone would need her and she'd be allowed out briefly but that was that.  
  
Still, she wanted to see what a sunrise was really like, a sunset too. The tower windows were built high and barred to prevent and dissuade attempts (the desperate still tried of course but the windows worked) but it meant that no one could see out of them. It was blue although rarely, mostly just uniform grey of varying shades or a burnt red or orange, nothing to really say if it was the way some of the more fanciful books spoke of. They made it sound transcendent, enough to make the ugliest of places beautiful, to make one feel at peace. Something she would likely never see.  
  
"That's what they do to us," Jowan would say the times she brought it up with him as they pored over books, bored from having nothing to do but read and research outside of lessons, "we don't get to have real lives do we?"  
  
"Careful," she would tease, trying to stop from smiling because some Templars took it as a sign of them being up to no good and sent them off to their rooms or made them write out parts of the Chant until their wrists ached, "you'll start sounding like Anders and then you'll be locked up. What would I do without you for a whole year hmm?"  
  
One time Jowan had given her a lopsided smile, sighing, looking very different from her best friend so suddenly that it had thrown her off balance, a moment she had nonetheless forgotten about until years later.  
  
"You'd be fine without me," Jowan had insisted, flipping the page in his book, "I'd be the one lost without you."  
  
She hadn't known what to say about that but it had been dinner anyway and it was better to get to meals early before everything fresh and tasty was gone and before the din in the dining hall became deafening.  
  
She'd see sunsets later and hate them when she was a Warden because they signalled that they had to stop travelling and put up camp because it was too dangerous to fumble in the dark and risk injury or ambush but there was never enough time, they never covered enough distance in a day, not with the Blight growing and swelling about them. It was even worse as the days grew shorter with winter setting in, long nights of watch and wasted hours. As an apprentice though, all she wants are a few normal moments (or what she gleans to be normal from books or the Templars who talk to them like normal people and not monsters ready to slit their wrists and call forth demons) that normal people leading normal lives have. There's one young Templar she likes well enough, Cullen who is new and awkward but in a different way to Jowan, trying to be serious and stern but ending up red-faced instead. (Cullen who apparently fancies her but tower gossip is rife with inaccuracies because when you have too much free time on your hands you like to embellish the gossip to spice things up.) She asks Cullen about it because Cullen is either too noble to even try to lie or he stutters and corrects himself so many times that catching him in a lie is all too easy.  
  
"You've really never seen one?" He asks, not daring to lean against the wall as she dirties the knees of her robes pulling up herbs by the root (apparently someone wants to try to grow them indoors and it's easier this way, she's really only doing it to get fresh air) even though it's hideously muggy and sticky, late summer in Ferelden.  
  
"I must have done when I was little but," she pauses to catch her breath, wiping the sweat from her brow with the back of her hand, grimacing at her hair and clothes sticking to her skin, "I was very little when I came here, I can't remember."  
  
"I've never thought..." Cullen trails off and it hurts when he does that, when he stops himself from relating to a Mage as if they're a completely different species although by now she expects and understands it. Still, it doesn't erase the hurt. It's quiet and she finishes what she's doing, rising to dust herself off as best she can, knowing that soon she'll have to go back in. "You're trusted enough aren't you Amell?"  
  
"I suppose," she begins carefully, turning to look back at Cullen - he has sunburn across his nose and cheeks.  
  
"I can bend the rules, just this once."  
  
"Won't you get in trouble?" Her voice is very small, incredulous. Templars don't do nice things for Mages, not like this.  
  
"Don't worry about it, please." He smiles and motions for her to look out and over the water and she's not going to question more now (she certainly will later, for years to come she'll wonder about it) because this will be her only chance. She settles back, stretches her legs out, tilts her head up, leaning back on her arms to enjoy the moment, beneath the shadow of Kinloch Hold, with her Templar guard only feet away but for that moment the world melts away, only the sun dipping below the horizon, turning the black waters orange and red and pink, the heat finally dissipating. It isn't everything the books said it would be but she thinks that things seldom are. Instead it's her moment, a bright spot amidst the bleak monotony of Circle Mage life.


End file.
